Josh Vowles: Hi Zack, can you tell us a bit about yourself. Who are you? And what do you do?

 

Zack Weiss: Of course. My name is Zack Weiss, and I'm originally from Toronto, Canada. Growing up I was always interested in different things like sports gaming, traveling. And eventually I got to where I'm at now, which is Israel in a city called Hertzelia, which is close to Tel Aviv.

Before I started working in Israel, I actually decided to join the army. I was in the special forces for 3 years, and it was an incredible experience.

Afterwards I got my degree, and at the same time I started working for Odeeo as a lot of people know which is the industry leader for in game audio ads. I started as an SDR and I went up to BD manager. And now I'm the global business development manager. And you know, my job is pretty much to connect and to provide as much value as possible for our partners who are elite class brands and publishers.

Meeting with different people, learning different things from the industry. giving my 2 cents running content. So that is more or less my job at Odeeo.

 

Josh: Awesome. Special forces, I didn’t know that!

 

Zack: Yeah it was actually really interesting. I was the only non-Israeli in the unit that I was in. Intense, but always meaningful and important work.

 

Josh: Definitely. Do you miss those days, or are you enjoying your jet setting in a different way?

 

Zack: Yeah, if you can imagine the most pressure, intense time of your life where you grew so much, and learned so much that you wouldn't trade it for the world, but you also wouldn't take any amount of money to go back and do it again. Some things you do once, and you don't really miss it.

 

Josh: Tick it off the list and leave it to rest. Leads nicely into my next question, when you're not helping publishers unlock the power of audio, what can people find you doing? What are your hobbies?

 

Zack: I love to travel, If I ever get some time off of work, then I'm probably traveling. One of my favourite ways to travel is by sailing, so I have a couple of friends in Israel with big sailing boats, and they have beds and kitchens underneath, so we can sail to Europe. So some places we've been to are  Greece and Cyprus. I love it because it's just kind of you and nature. No other people around. No light pollution.

Other than traveling. I love playing sports mostly the cold ones, since I'm from Canada. So hockey, snowboarding some rugby.

And I think most of all just learning new things. I'm such a curious person. so sometimes maybe that could be a little bit annoying. But you know, I think if you don't ask questions, then you'll never know the answer. So that's something I'm always trying to do.

 

Josh: Is there much of a snowboarding or ice hockey scene in in in Israel?

 

Zack: So it's actually really interesting that that there is. So on the border of Israel and Lebanon there is a mountain range where they have ski resorts. there's also a an NHL size ice skating rink in Israel, and like about 3 or 4 smaller ones. So they actually have a House League. They have a league here. Which is kind of funny because you're in the desert, but recently Israel played Dubai in a big hockey game. So it's nice to see the Middle Eastern countries taking up winter sports.

 

Josh: Not something you necessarily associate with Israel, but it makes sense! To sidestep slightly, I want to talk more about tue work that you guys do with Odeeo. So can you tell us a little bit more about Odeeo? What is your mission statement?

 

Zack: Of course, so it's actually great, because we just came up with a new website which has everything and more on it. But in general, I would say that Odeeo’s mission is to create a better in game advertising experience that connects gamers, developers and brands through non-interruptive audio innovation.

Us at Odeeo, we come from a long standing gaming and mobile advertising background, with a long history of kind of working with a lot of different people like gaming developers and brands. So I would say, because of all that experience, we understand their challenges and we're focused on building the best possible solutions. While putting transparency and forefront at you know the head of what we do.

In the advertising industry, transparency is so important, so is trust. So these are a couple of the things that we focus on and that we try to provide to all of our clients.

 

Josh: Having moved into the industry from the forces, what are some of your favourite things about working in mobile games advertising, and the mobile games industry?

 

Zack: I think for me my favourite thing is working with people from all around the world. The industry in general is so diverse and far reaching. So whether I'm talking with our partners in Singapore or my coworkers that are in the Ukraine or Turkey or Miami it's always a unique experience to be able to interact and learn and create friendships across languages and cultures.

 

Josh: It's certainly a very diverse industry, but also a close knit community as well.

 

Zack: Yeah, it's amazing. It kind of shows you, I think, like the power of I don't know what to call it. If it's like friendship or love, or just you know, good-hearted people. But the fact that you know the gaming industry from what I've seen, and I'm relatively new to it I guess, it's been so welcoming.

No one judges. Everyone's genuinely happy to see each other and to learn. I think it's a kind of a great like microcosm for what the world could be.

 

Josh: 100% and for my next question, touching on the work you Odeeo is doing, what do you think makes in-game audio advertising so unique?

 

Zack: Yes, of course. So, in game audio advertising is the newest and most innovative way to advertise in mobile games. Audio ads allow developers to monetize without interrupting the gameplay, allowing brands to reach players in a seamless and non-intrusive way unlike the classic ad formats that people are used to.

Audio ads provide pure incremental revenue, which means that they're not competing or conflicting with the publishers current ad monetization stack. So if you're a publisher, you can keep on doing whatever you're doing to make revenue and we're just kind of the cherry on top.

I actually recently saw a post from our CEO, Amit Monheit that showed new research from Densu one of the world's biggest advertising holding companies showing audio ads produced 50% higher attentive seconds than the norm for other ads. Which I think is really interesting, and furthermore according to IAB, digital audio, had the fastest year on year growth, rising almost 60% to around 5 billion last year.

So it's clear from these numbers, from the trajectory of audio ads, where they started and where they're at now that they're here to stay.

 

Josh: User experience has been a hot topic at our recent events in Hamburg and Barcelona. From your perspective how does audio really ensure a positive user experience

 

Zack: With audio ads. Developers are now monetizing time spent playing the game rather than interruptions. Publishers report that they found that with the right implementation audio ads have a net neutral impact on retention, and some cases have seen a positive impact on session length.

In general, I think by allowing the users to stay in the game we're catering to their wants which is to play as much as possible without interruption. So in general now with, you know as was mentioned about the Google's new policies I think this is a huge step in the right direction for user experience.

 

Josh: And I think on that note as well, I wanted understand how you ensure the ad is served if say the user has their phone on mute or is listening to music?

 

Zack: 100% and this is a really important topic Odeeo’s SDK measures the device audio and won't charge for an ad if the device audio is off.

The industry generally has standards for things like viewability and audibility that have been agreed upon by major advertisers, agencies, and media owners and Odeeo operates according to those standards from organizations like the media ratings council. So we will only monetize impressions that meet those standards.

We also use Oracle Moat to validate all of our impressions for audibility, and the advertisers can use their verification vendor of choice for measuring audibility and IVT as well.

It's interesting, because you know the markets constantly shifting and right now we're seeing kind of, you know a much more I would say of a focus on the measurements. So what you know a year or 2 years ago to where the industry is at now is constantly changing and I think for the better.

 

Josh: Interesting, and with it being as you said the cherry on top, it serves as that additional opportunity to monetize without taking the player out of the game should the circumstances be right. Moving on from this I wanted to talk a bit about what we can expect from Odeeo in the next year. Can you share a bit more about what is around the corner?

 

Zack: Yeah. So what can you expect from audio next year? great question and I think before next year, I'd like to talk about quickly what happened in the this year.

Odeeo recorded 300% year on year revenue and daily active user growth in 2022 and we served over a billion ads. So this is the type of trend that hopefully, we're going to be able to continue into next year. Positive growth, new partnerships with top tier brands, top tier publishers.

We came up with a new website which has a lot of our blogs and a lot of our case studies. Which shows a lot of our partners, old and new.

So I think you know, the main goal of Odeeo is to grow smart, to strengthen our partnerships with our clients and also create strong new ones.

And to keep on kind of educating the market both on the supply and the demand side to the positive benefits of in-game audio ads.

 

Josh: Great to hear! Taking another sidestep for the final question, I am putting together a playlist from the Gamesforum Meets series. And the way I am framing this playlist is, let's say a song plays every time you walk into a room. What song plays for you?

 

Zack: That's a great question. I guess if I would have to pick a song, the song that I've been kind of vibing to a lot this year has been by Afro B. The song is called Joanna or Drogba. I mean I love all music. But this always puts me in a good mood. I love dancing to it. So that's probably the song I would play.

 

Josh: I will have to check it out! Thanks so much for your time Zack.

 

You can find more from Zack including his recent breakdown of Temu here, and checkout Odeeo’s new site here!